With reference to the article Teaching English through storytelling (TMID, 8 March), l would like to make the following comments.

There is no doubt that storytelling from the earliest age enhances a child’s readiness to talking, reading and writing. Literature in this ambit is ample and it is not the scope of this article to delve into it.

However, my primary concern is on the notion as appeared in Josanne Cassar’s interview about “teaching English through storytelling”. Storytelling should remain as “storytelling” as such and the only – and I repeat – the only objective of storytelling should be that of inculcating a love for books into the young hearers. Only in adopting such an approach can we – as a nation – hope to have more and better readers. This core concept of “fun” in reading was also highlighted by the National Research Council in 1998 (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/startearly/ch_ 1.html).

Books are meant to instill fantasy and creativity (among other things) in our children and to let their imagination grow all along the story. In listening to the story, a lot of things happen in the listener which, eventually, effects his/her reading and writing habits.

If we start mingling the teaching aspect into the storytelling-weave, we are doing a disservice both to the children and to the author of the book.

In September 2003, five international authors – Bernard Ashley, Anne Fine, Jamila Gavin, Chris Powling and Philip Pullman – published their concerns in the form of a book entitled: Lost The Plot (URL: http://education.guardian.co.uk/ schools/story/0,5500,1052077,00.html). I invite the readers to read through this article or buy the book from ncll.org.uk.

One of the comments which made an impact on me was by Philip Pullman who said that he did not find the verb “enjoy” out of 71 different verbs falling under the word “reading”. This finding is really serious indeed because it sheds light on the way we educators are introducing children to reading and through this approach, we are not inculcating the core concept of the “love for books” which is the missing element in our children.

I have successfully implemented a storytelling programme at St Francis Primary School, Cospicua in which I have trained parents in storytelling. The group comprises of more than 25 parents who, through rotation and as assigned by the head of school, they do storytelling at all levels. This storytelling programme has been going for four years now. My emphasis in both the training and the monitoring sessions held with the parents has always been the same: we do storytelling for the only reason of inducing a love for books in our children. This brings out the fact that all may do storytelling without the need to be a teacher in the strict sense. Having said so, if the child asks for an explanation of a certain word, the explanation should always be given well. In this regard, we need to remind the reader the importance of phonetics and phonemes. Yet this should not be done at the expense of the story itself.

Therefore, my encouragement and advise to all storytellers is to leave storytelling as “storytelling”. Diluting the core concept of storytelling with teaching languages does not augur well for our kids. The teaching aspect surely has its place on another occasion but definitely not during storytelling.

Claudio Laferla

Tarxien